Writers in the Storm

by Colleen M. Story

If you want to start the New Year off with a bang, there’s one thing you have to have: hope.

Hope that next year will be a great year for your writing. Hope that you’ll be able to accomplish more than you did this year. Hope that you’ll become a better writer and find even more fulfillment in your writing life.

But after a tough year (like this one!), hope can be a little hard to find. Most of us are feeling tired, wrung out, stressed, and unsure about what the future might bring.

I would encourage you to take some time, perhaps over the coming weekend, to inspire your sense of hope. It could be the key to a successful year to come.

But first, let’s see if your supply of this critical emotion might be running a little low.

Signs You’re Running Low on Hope for Your Writing Life

What is hope, anyway? The dictionary describes it as a “feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen.” When you hope for something, you expect “with confidence,” Merriam Webster states. You have trust in your expected outcome.

Hope is critical to your writing success because it creates that positive state of mind you need to accomplish your goals. You may hope to publish a book next year, become an Amazon best-seller, or expand your newsletter subscribers by 500. Hope helps you look forward to this outcome with excitement, which fuels your efforts.

Hope also helps make any of your current struggles or challenges easier to bear, because you have hope that things will get better in the future.

Hopelessness, on the other hand, is a lack of hope, and leads to all sorts of negative outcomes. Writers who feel hopeless lose interest in their writing, are likely to lack the inspiration they used to have to write, and may feel powerless to change those feelings.

Ask yourself if any of these statements sound familiar:

• Your writing no longer "sparks joy" for you. It feels more like a chore you must complete than something you look forward to.
• You’ve let several of your writing projects slide, and you’re not worried about it.
• When you think of next year, you can’t think of any writing goals you want to pursue.
• You’ve gotten cynical—you don’t take your writing seriously and you often speak about your progress sarcastically.
• You don’t feel well, physically. You’re not really sick, but neither do you feel energetic or vibrant.
• You suffered a string of disappointments this year, and they’ve worn away your motivation.
• You feel deficient somehow, like you don't have "what it takes" to become the writer you want to be.

If you recognize yourself in any of these statements—or if you’re just not all that excited about writing this year—it’s time to spark some hope in your spirit.

5 Ways to Nurture Hope In Your Writing Spirit

Choose one of the following activities, give it a try, and see if you notice hope returning. You’ll be able to tell—it feels bubbly and sparkly.

1. Review This Year with Rose-Colored Glasses

Take an hour to list all the good things that happened in your writing life this year. “Like what?” you may ask. Put on your rose-colored glasses. You’re looking only for the good stuff, and you’re going to treat yourself like your best friend. Write down every single little accomplishment you had.

These could be as simple as completing a draft of a book, even if it’s terrible. Maybe you wrote at least three times a week most weeks, or you blogged more consistently than last year. Maybe you put together a plan for your next book launch, or you outlined your next nonfiction book.

Maybe all you did was complete two short stories or update your website. Whatever it was, write it down. Just thinking about it isn’t enough. Make a list.

Once you finish, look it over. Pin it to the wall or refrigerator if you like. This can help you realize that even in a bad year, you got some stuff done. That can give you hope that next year will be at least as good, and most likely better.

2. Write Something to Lift Someone Else Up

Hopelessness walks hand in hand with isolation. You can inspire new hope inside yourself by using your writing strengths to benefit someone else.

Your job: Come up with a writing project that will make someone else's life better. Write a hand-written thank you note to someone who deserves it, create a blog or guest post that uplifts readers, or host a writing contest and give away a small prize.

Write a poem for someone you care about, or put your writing skills to work for a project you care about (grant writing?). There are all sorts of possibilities.

A few months ago, for instance, my young nephew asked me for help with his research paper. It felt really good to use the skills I’ve developed to help him, and it inspired me at the same time. (Teaching always does that, right?)

Use your imagination, then follow through and complete the assignment. See how you feel.

3. Go Flying High and Draw

It's easy to lose hope when you're stuck in your small little world, so hop onto your imaginary plane and get some altitude. Imagine yourself high in the sky looking down on yourself and your life. Fly so high that you can see yourself five, ten, even twenty years ago.

Now plot a line chart of where you were then, where writing is concerned, and track your progress to where you are now. Write down your key writing accomplishments for each year.

This sort of overview can help you see that the year you’ve just completed—long as it’s seemed—is just a blip on the radar. Your new point of view diminishes the challenges of one year and accentuates your accomplishments over a lifetime.

If you focus on the progress you’ve made long-term, the challenges of this year fade away into the distance, leaving you with renewed hope for next year.

4. Tune Into What Inspires You

What inspires you? You have a few weeks before the year is over to read your most inspiring books, listen to your most inspiring interviews, watch your most inspiring movies, visit your most inspiring locations, and visit your most uplifting friends.

Write down a list, and then make a point to schedule at least two inspiring activities per week (more is better) until the year has come to a close.

Get a print of your favorite painting for yourself for Christmas. Put on your most inspiring music and listen to it at least once a day. Schedule a family home movie night and put on the ones that rev you up—preferably those that show characters overcoming great odds to win. (“Rocky” is a great option.)

This isn't an indulgence—it's hope therapy. Write down your list, adjust your schedule, and enjoy. You should be feeling more hopeful by the end of the year.

5. Explore the Possibilities

Right now, you may not be thinking too much about what may be possible in your writing life next year. Yet hope is found in possibilities.

Using your journal or pad and paper, write down your answer to this question: What is one possible improvement you can make to your writing life next year?

Just one. That’s all you need. One possible improvement. It can be as small or as large as you like.

Once you have your answer down, answer this question: What writing project could you possibly complete next year?

Could be any project. A short story, novel, poem, nonfiction book, new website, new blog, book launch, new course…your choice. Any project at all.

Now for your last question: What would you like to do next year in your writing life that you think is impossible?

Go ahead—what do you dream of doing as a writer but that right now, seems impossible?

What is it? Write it down…

Ah, there’s magic in that answer, because it’s those things we think are impossible that often inspire us the most. Some examples: get an agent, sign a traditional publishing contract, become a bestseller, win a contest, start a podcast, speak at a writer’s conference, or have a sold-out book signing.

Once you’ve answered all three of these questions, you should begin to see the possibilities for next year—which is often inspiring and can give you hope. On top of that, it’s just fun.

“Hopefully” one of these exercises will help get you excited about your writing future. If not, don’t give up. Keep looking for that new inspiration you need. Odds are once you start seeking it out, you’ll find it.

Do you have ways to nurture feelings of hope? Do you want to share any of your answers to the questions above? We'd love to hear about it down in the comments!

Get help setting inspiring goals this year with Colleen’s FREE “Start the Year Off Right” bundle, available here!

About Colleen

Colleen M. Story inspires writers to overcome modern-day challenges and find creative fulfillment in their work. Her latest release, Writer Get Noticed!, was a gold-medal winner in the 2019 Reader’s Favorite Book Awards, a 1st-place winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards, and Book By Book Publicity’s best writing/publishing book of 2019. Colleen frequently serves as a workshop leader and motivational speaker, where she helps attendees remove mental and emotional blocks and tap into their unique creative powers. Find more at her motivational site, Writing and Wellness, and on her author website, or connect with her on Twitter.

by Penny C. Sansevieri

Practically speaking, a book cover is just a tool to bind and protect the pages of a book. But every writer – and every consumer – knows that a book cover is so much more. Your cover is a visual ambassador for your book: it’s a marketing tool, a billboard for your brand, and sometimes even a small piece of art available to the reading public.

Having a great book cover is an essential for a successful author, so here are ten key book cover design tips that will ensure you’re getting the most out of yours.

10 Design Tips for a "Buy Now" Book Cover

1. Don’t use too many typefaces. Limit yourself to two. Some book covers may require a third typeface; others can shine with just one. Too many fonts cheapen your overall look and make you seem less professional.

2. Don’t overload your cover with ideas. A book cover is a visual elevator pitch—you’ve got literally milliseconds to convince a potential reader. And if you can’t boil your book down to one central concept, you’re in trouble. As a writer, you know about main ideas and supporting details. The front cover gets your main idea. A few supporting details go on the back in your book blurb.

3. Don’t skimp on an illustrator. Seek out a talented professional if your book requires a custom image – and be prepared to pay them for their services. Custom illustration isn’t cheap, but nothing kills a cover like a bad illustration.

4. Don’t rely on Photoshop for imagery. Our eyes are extremely savvy when it comes to inconsistencies in lighting and scale and will pick up details like a man who is too big for the path on which he’s walking or who is lit in a different way than the forest in which you’ve placed him. Similar images are probably available at a stock agency. If not, hire a photographer and a few models for a couple hours.

5. Use caution when depicting a character. More than any other art form, reading inspires and requires imagination. If you’re writing nonfiction, depicting a specific person on your cover curtails this possibility for any reader who isn’t that person. Some genres, like Romance, rely heavily on cover character depictions, which is all the more reason to think carefully about who you place on yours.

6. Don’t rely on trends. I heartily encourage authors to look for trends, to be fans of their own genre, and to reference the bestseller pages for inspiration on what piques buyer interest, but there’s a fine line between ensuring you’re competitive and becoming lost in the sea of options. Just because everyone else is using handwritten font or a particular color of blue doesn’t mean you need to follow suit. This is particularly important when considering the first book in a potential series because trends fade; you don’t want to be stuck with something that’s out of date when they do.

7. Don’t be afraid to break a few rules. Sometimes I’ll see a great cover that breaks one of the cardinal rules of cover design and is bolder and more intriguing for doing so. If your designer has some great out of the box ideas and you’re willing to take a risk, I’d encourage you to get feedback from your network. If you have a super fan group, give them early voting access to ideas you’re floating around. A radical cover may actually be just the ticket, but don’t make the decision to go in that direction without doing a market test.

8. Don’t get overly clever. Remember the visual elevator pitch rule: you’ve got milliseconds in front of a potential buyer If your designer resorts to “clever” font play that ultimately confuses rather than intrigues that buyer, forget about making a sale.

9. Don’t overdo it with the copy. Your front cover should not replace your book description, your reviews section on Amazon, and your resume. Non-fiction does carry the burden of proving legitimacy, but you need to decide what’s most important for making the best first impression; the rest can go on your retail page.

10. Don’t use a template. A cover template may seem like a reasonable (and affordable) solution to the difficult task of creating an effective book cover. But remember, book covers aren’t created – they’re designed. What happens when someone else publishes their book using that same cover template?

Final Thoughts

You can create the book cover of your dreams while also designing an effective marketing tool for your work – but it will take bringing others into the process. Your book is worth the investment, especially now that so many of us are shopping online, where we make judgments based on a cover the size of a thumbnail. In the long run, it’s worth it to do all you can to create a visual image that compels those shoppers to happily click "Buy Now."

About Penny

Penny C. Sansevieri, Founder and CEO of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a bestselling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching Self-Publishing for NYU. She was named one of the top influencers of 2019 by New York Metropolitan Magazine. 

Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most innovative Amazon Optimization programs as well as Social Media/Internet book marketing campaigns. She is the author of 18 books, including How to Sell Books by the Truckload on Amazon: 2021 Amazon Ads Powerhouse Edition, Revise and Re-Release Your Book, 5-Minute Book Marketing, and Red Hot Internet Publicity, which has been called the "leading guide to everything Internet." Her next book, From Book to Bestseller, is due out in Spring 2021.

AME has had dozens of books on top bestseller lists, including those of The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. 

To learn more about Penny’s books or her promotional services, visit www.amarketingexpert.com.  

by James Preston

When I read a great novel, I often find myself thinking, “How on earth did the author do it?” followed by, “Where did he start?” Every published author has had to get past the blank page.

Let’s talk about Plato, the Athenian philosopher. You remember him, right? He told “The Parable of the Cave,” which went like this:

There once was a group of prisoners who had been chained to the wall in a cave their entire lives. They had never seen the outer world, only shadows cast on the wall in front of them. For them, the shadows were reality.

Then one of the prisoners was set free and moved into the outer world. She was amazed — there were three dimensions! Color! Reality was far more complex than she had imagined.

I recently reread James Clavell’s magnificent novel, Noble House. This thing is huge; the hardback is over a thousand pages, so it is not a book to be undertaken lightly. On top of that there are probably a hundred characters, all of them with lives of their own, backgrounds and a part to play in the story.

I had the usual questions: “How on earth did the author do it?” followed by, “Where did he start?”

Then I read a brief article that included the parable of the cave and the two things — my feeling of inadequacy when I looked at Noble House and was awestruck and Plato’s shadows on the wall — came together. Sometimes things do that.

I realized that, like the prisoners, I saw the shadow. I saw the product, not the object that produced it. When we read a novel we don’t see the effort, the false starts, the rewrites, the edits that went into it.

This realization led me to a question I get asked every now and then by people who want to write . . .

How Do I Start?

We’ve all heard the stories about the writer who rolls a sheet of paper into her typewriter (see below) and stares at the blank page.

You know you want to write a book. In fact, maybe you’ve already tried and quit, and now you want to do it again and “get it right” this time. You read articles and see advice like, “Start with a character,” or “Start with a problem,” and on and on. And then there is the blank page.

The Blank Page has defeated lots of writers.

I’ll describe several ways of getting going and some of the advantages and disadvantages of each. Plus, I’ll talk about how I wrote my first mystery.

Note: For younger readers, click here for more about typewriters. Trivia fact: You can find apps that will make “typewriter noises” as you keyboard. Tom Hanks even invented one that works with the iPad.

Let’s begin with some basics.

Setting

You might know that you want to write about a small town in west Texas. Clavell wrote about Hong Kong. I write about Southern California, specifically Huntington Beach, Surf City, USA.

Character

This one’s obvious, right? In Noble House, it’s Ian Dunross.

Plot

Can you start a story without a character? Sure. Think of a situation, for example the protagonist is given control of the family business, because it’s failing.

Denouement

And in the end . . . One way to create a novel is to start with the end and figure out how it happened.

There are many ways of getting to The End. In my case I was writing scripts for a medical training company (thrilling shows about surgical instruments and how to give injections). One of the directors was an avid sailor. He mentioned how shallow parts of the channel between Orange County and Catalina Island are, and how supertankers had to stay in northbound and southbound lanes. I thought, “That’s interesting,” but there wasn’t a story there. (More on this in the next section.)

So these are the parts you need to work with. We’re still left with that question . . . What do you do first?

4 Ways To Start

1. Begin with an outline

An outline can be on the back of an envelope or it can be a hundred pages or anything in between. A traditional outline would look like this:

Chapter One

A private jet lands in Hong Kong and the police discover guns being smuggled. Introduce Linc Bartlett, Inspector Armstrong, K. C. Tcholok.

Notice it’s linear; one thing happens, then another.

Another type of outline is more free-form and might look like a group of circles connected by lines. In this case it would have a circle for airport connected to “Linc Bartlett,” “guns,” and “smuggling.” 

Advantage: An outline forces you to think about the story. Whether it’s linear or free-form, you have to answer the dreaded question: What happens next?

Disadvantage: I think there are several, but one that can sneak up on you is that you might actually like your outline. If and when your characters come to life and start to speak to you (and, BTW, that is one of the greatest moments in what we do), they may not care about your Roman numerals and numbers. There will be a temptation to make them toe the line. Sometimes you have to make characters follow orders and sometimes you have to let them run wild and free. But that’s the subject of another post.

Yet another way is 3” x 5” cards. Years ago I read an essay by the famous science fiction writer Larry Niven, author of the Ringworld series, who said he used index cards and on each card something had to happen. Side note: I have lost that reference. Sorry, Mr. Niven.

Advantage: Obviously, you know where you’re going. You can spread cards out on the floor and see the whole story at once — allowing you to identify sections that are slow, or places where too much happens at once.

Disadvantage:  This is a big one. We live to tell stories. Once it’s outlined it’s possible to lose interest. After all, the story is told. (This same pitfall applies to telling too many people about the story before you write it.)

A more practical disadvantage is space. I laid out cards for my first mystery, covering the living room floor. (I have a very understanding spouse.) Then my cats came and rearranged all my work. Pro tip: if you do cards, number them so you can put them back in order.

2. Begin with characters

You can start by listing the people in your book. There are many sample character development forms, but most involve physical characteristics, occupation, education, and so on.

Back to my story for a moment. Sometime after I heard about the shipping lane and supertankers, I found myself thinking about a stockbroker living in Manhattan “happily moving around electronic piles of money,” who returns to California when his wife is hospitalized.

To this day I have no idea where he came from, but there he was and he just wouldn’t go away. I thought, “That’s interesting,” but once again it’s not a story.

3. Start with the ending

Another way to start is to write the end. It won’t spoil Noble House to say there’s a typhoon. In my case I saw a supertanker, unable to either turn or stop, bearing down on a disabled small boat. And the bow of the tanker is on fire.

4. Assemble your pieces

I had the shipping lanes, I had my broker, now back in California, who is sailing back from Catalina at night, hits fog, and then hears – feels – a supertanker approaching. Close, so close to a story. Obviously, he doesn’t get run down and killed. The end is another encounter with a tanker, only he can see this one because the bow is on fire, and he’s right in front of it.

Final Thoughts

Here’s the answer: it matters less how you start than that you start. Let’s say that again: it matters less how you start than that you start.

If you have an idea for a character, or a situation or an ending, write it down and go from there. The blank page is waiting for you to fill it.

Oh, what happened to my broker and the supertanker? Why, I went from one idea to another to a third and then to 3” x 5” cards (the cat playground), and he came to life and told me his story. Don’t worry, he didn’t get run over. After a lot of work the novel got me an award, an agent, and a contract.

Note about references…

The problem with references is that there is such a huge amount of writing about writing that it’s not only hard to choose who to read, it’s possible to only study and never write. Plus, nowadays you’ll find different opinions on just about everything.

My suggestion is to follow your instincts and listen to those teachers who seem to be speaking directly to you. They are out there and the simple act of finding them will be worthwhile for your writing.

Now it’s your turn. If you’ve done it, how did you beat the blank page? What did you do first? If you are standing at the edge of this pool, thinking about sticking a toe in, what does your gut tell you to do first? C’mon, we’ve given you some ideas here — what looks good?

Come with me. The water’s fine.

About James

James R. Preston is the author of the multiple-award-winning Surf City Mysteries. He is currently at work on the sixth, called Remains To Be Seen. His most recent works are Crashpad and Buzzkill, two historical novellas set in the 1960’s at Cal State Long Beach. Kirkus Reviews called Buzzkill “A historical thriller enriched by characters who sparkle and refuse to be forgotten.”

His webpage is www.jamesrpreston.com. He can be reached at james@jamesrpreston.com.